The dilemma of unnecessary memes

Social media works in mysterious ways. The tiniest details could be brought up and could be completely blown out of proportion or could be the most viral talking subject for the week. I think it’s time we draw a line; what is considered an appropriate behaviour and what should be condemned. We need to stop making memes out of people’s miseries; if anything it does more harm to them than benefit, the latest news regarding “Aunty Gormint” family or rather I should say Mrs Qamar’s family is a testimony to my claim.

In an interview Mrs Qamar’s son stated: “Everyone makes fun of my mother. We stopped attending family events because people instead of enjoying the family functions, shift their focus on my mother. We have had many altercations with our relatives and neighbours over the issue. As a result no one comes to our home anymore. We are unable to find suitable matches for our sisters now. Even my father and brother are targeted whenever they go out.”

This is not the first time that a meme has affected the life of an individual. Last year a video surfaced on the Internet of a group of friends enjoying snowfall in Murree. One of them out of sheer excitement or anything made a blooper on air saying “we are proud you”. This harmless phrase caught up with the next big meme sensation on social media , comments, tags, laughs flooded in on social media as it became the new talking point. How low can we further stoop? Imagine how shattered she must have felt and how her confidence was given a jolt. In fact one of her colleague in school said that she stopped going to school because she could not face the world and was pondering on ending her life in order to save herself from the embarrassment and ridicules of the world. Yes that’s right, we pushed her to the point that she thought of killing herself.

We need to address the root cause of it. Why people do this? Why Pakistani society is reacting in this way? If you ask me, I think it’s got to do more with taking everything in a casual and non-serious manner, and it all started post War on Terror consequentially resulting in imploding our own country with terrorist attacks and thus we became immune to loss of lives, it does not matter to us now, loss of lives is just a number for us now we are insensitive to such news. Similarly instead of having empathy for the poor old woman (Mrs Qamar) at her frenzy of rage at the government, instead of locating her whereabouts, addressing her concerns as to why she is so frustrated with the government which is the sensitive angle, we instead took humour out of it. Why? Because became insensitive a long time ago. We took the option of making memes, songs, and God knows what. Why? Because people’s miseries do not bother us any longer, we have become emotionless submissive citizens, taking everything lightly as if nothing matters. That has become our mantra.

Remember the lynching of two Sialkot brothers in 2010. I could not watch the whole video, whatever I did manage to watch left me in total despair and a feeling of self-loath for being a part of this society, I for once had problems in sleeping, seven years down the line how many of us can be true to ourselves and claim that we feel the same disgust at any untoward incident today. Maybe it’s not our fault, we have been brainwashed over a period of time, it’s like the empathy word does not exist in our dictionary, it’s like this cell has become inactive by a continuous poison being fed over the years.Amidst all the calamity, the tragedies that has befallen upon us I think we have taken humour as our coping strategy, and in that we sometimes cross the line.

Mrs Qamar resonated the anger that many of us have over the incompetent and corrupt governments that we have been repeatedly having through the course of our history, as such on her publicly courageous act she deserves a word of appreciation, she is better than us who sit in the cozy rooms of ours, paying no heed to the malpractices of the state.